Thursday, 15 June 2017

"Just normal stuff for hire boats"

It was all so quiet on the Grand Union. Then, this morning, we joined the Stratford Canal at Kingswood Junction and, suddenly, there were hire boats everywhere. Mostly going in our direction and mostly in front of us. The first few locks of the Lapworth flight had queues, but it all sorted itself out eventually.

At what is probably the trickiest pound for passing in, between locks 9 and 8, we had to pass a long hire boat coming down.

The hire boat did the right thing by going into the 'dead' area to the right of the lock so we could squeeze past hugging the bank, then, once we were clear, it reversed and headed into the lock.

We tied up at Hockley Heath, and I cycled back to Warwick to get the car. Had I cycled on the towpath it would have been downhill all the way, but I chose to use the B-road. This avoided villages, by and large, and was rather hillier than I was expecting. Still, I got to the car and brought it back OK.

As Jan steered under Bridge 25 I took a few photos, this being the best of them. The strong contrast between the sunlight and the shade of the bridge made getting the balance between under- and overexposing tricky.

We ate at the Wharf Inn - two meals for £10.49 was good value. (Jan had the beef and ale pie; I went for the hunter's chicken. We gave each other half of our meals - Jan's pie was very good.)